Scaffolds for Liver Tissue Engineering

Successful in vitro engineering of functional liver tissue has been a goal for tissue engineering research
to provide solutions to diseases such as liver disease which currently have no medical cure other than
organ transplantation. Initial successes in producing 3D liver tissue constructs arose through the
formation of hepatocyte spheroids[1]. However the size of these constructs will reach a critical size
before a lack in vascularisation results in reduced mass transport and cell viability decreases [2]. It is
widely thought that a solution to this problem is to design 3D porous scaffolds upon which a cell
culture can grow and form 3D tissue constructs. This document will briefly outline some of the current
research on scaffolds for liver tissue engineering and suggest some potential topics for further
research.